She came to Middle Tennessee from Pennsylvania at 14, and in the ensuing near-decade she has become an international superstar, and a wealthy young woman. Those are rare and laudable things, but they’ve been done before.

Swift, though, is unprecedented. She came to popular attention with Top 10 country hit “Tim McGraw” when she was 16, becoming the first mid-teenage singer-songwriter to do so since Janis Ian hit the Top 20 with “Society’s Child” in 1967. And Swift has made the most graceful transition from teen stardom to adult music career since Brenda Lee, who recorded signature hit “I’m Sorry” at age 15 and maintained an impeccable image on her way to the country music and rock and roll halls of fame.

Yet these are not the reasons that The Tennessean recognizes Swift as the 2013 Tennessean of the Year.

Swift has become a worldwide ambassador for Tennessee’s capital city, an example to millions of young (and not-so-young) people of how to turn damaged feelings into healing creativity, and a financial booster to some of the city’s most important institutions. In October, the Taylor Swift Education Center opened at the greatly expanded Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, courtesy of Swift’s $4 million gift, the largest individual artist gift in the museum’s history.

The center, which opened ahead of schedule in October, spans two floors and includes three classrooms, a learning lab and, coming in 2014, an interactive exhibit gallery. It gives the museum seven times more space for education.

And this month, on her birthday, Swift offered up $100,000 to the Nashville Symphony, an organization that endured severe financial uncertainty in 2013. For the second consecutive year, Swift topped DoSomething.org’s list of the top 20 charitable celebrities, and much of her generosity is intended for the betterment of Nashville.

“For her to believe in us, the hometown institutions, and to be focused on Nashville speaks volumes,” says Kyle Young, the director and chief executive officer of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “How often do you think she’s approached to do things, all over the world? So it means so much for her to believe in us and think that investments here would help the city she clearly cares so much about.”

The ambassador

In many ways, Swift carries Nashville and its music all over the world.

Delanie Walker, who plays tight end for the Titans will be at children's charity Generosity, located at 533 Brick Church Park Pike, to sign footballs for underpriviledged children this Christmas on Monday Nov. 25, 2013, in Nashville in Tenn.

Delanie Walker, who plays tight end for the Tennessee Titans, signed footballs at children’s charity Generosity on Monday for a Country Music Association-led effort to collect gifts for underprivileged children.

The CMA’s “A Gift for All” program works with Nashville-based partner charities Generosity and The Bridge Inc. to collect and distribute gifts for children in need. Many gifts collected so far came before the Nashville taping of “CMA Country Christmas” at Bridgestone Arena on Nov. 8.

That special airs from 8 to 10 p.m. Monday on ABC. The CMA still needs toys for children of all ages up to 18. Donations can be dropped off at the CMA office, 1 Music Circle South, this holiday season.

Click the photo above for a gallery from the the 46th Annual CMA Awards in 2012. Here, cohosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood dance "Gangnam Style" during the show, which aired live from Bridgestone Arena Nov. 2, 2012. (Photo by Larry McCormack)

Resale ticket prices for tomorrow night’s CMA Awards are at an all-time high since the event moved to Bridgestone Arena, according to data from an online ticketing search engine.

With the awards sold out, fans are turning to secondary sites to buy their tickets for the show that will air Wednesday night on ABC.

The average price to get into the award show is $423, according to SeatGeek.com, which pulls together ticket listings from major secondary websites like StubHub, TicketsNow, TicketNetwork and RazorGator so that shoppers can find the most affordable seats.

Cal Smith, who topped the charts with “Country Bumpkin,” “The Lord Knows I’m Drinking” and “It’s Time To Pay the Fiddler,” died Thursday, Oct. 10, at age 81.

April 7, 1932 - Oct. 10, 2013

Calvin Grand Shofner -- known professionally as Cal Smith, and famed for top-charting hits “Country Bumpkin,” “The Lord Knows I’m Drinking” and “It’s Time To Pay the Fiddler” -- died Thursday, Oct. 10, in Branson, Mo., at age 81.

Born in Gans, Okla., Mr. Smith grew up in the San Jose, Calif., area, and became a popular disc jockey prior to joining Ernest Tubb’s Texas Troubadours as a rhythm guitarist in 1962. Mr. Smith worked with Tubb until 1968, when he became a solo performer.

Don Wayne wrote “Country Bumpkin,” after being critiqued by a publishing industry professional as being too country: “Nobody wants to hear about that frost on the pumpkin,” was the criticism. Wayne wrote of a man who met a woman who teased him, “Hello, country bumpkin/ How’s the frost out on the pumpkin?”

“And then the story just unfolded,” Wayne told author Philip Self in “Guitar Pull: Conversations With Country’s Legendary Songwriters.” “I thought to myself, ‘Man, I’ve stumbled on to a hit song here.’ But after thinking about it further, I thought, ‘This could be more than a hit song. This could be a great song, if I write what I’m seeing.’”

Click for more photos from the 46th Annual CMA Awards at Bridgestone Arena. (Photo:Larry McCormack / The Tennessean)

The 47th annual CMA Awards show is a month away and while country music fans already know who is nominated — Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves lead the pack with six nods each — the Country Music Association revealed the first batch of performers for the show on Monday.

Underwood - who will perform at the Emmys Sunday night on CBS, is the new voice on the NFL Sunday night Football theme, and will appear in “The Sound of Music Live!” on NBC in December – easily remembers a time when the music business was so new to her that she didn’t realize the rarity of a No. 1 song.

“It was such a blur,” Underwood said of her first No. 1 song “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” “I went from nobody looking twice at me to people on the street knowing my name, and they know a lot about me. I was like, ‘Oh, is this good? I have a No. 1.” I never followed charts. I just heard stuff on the radio and liked it and bought it. I never thought about whose No. 1 and how many weeks it was No. 1. I just assumed that happened for everybody. It was like, ‘This awesome. People are asking me questions and they seem to be happy for me so I should be happy, too.’ Now I know there’s so much more involved. There’s a lot of work, and I didn’t get to appreciate that in the beginning of my career as much as I do now.”

In addition to her other duties, Underwood is also set to return as co-host of the 47th annual CMA Awards, which will air 7 p.m. Nov. 6 on ABC. She’s working with a man that she describes as “like the brother I never had.” She’s talking about Brad Paisley – the pair has co-hosted the show six times.

“He’s such a great guy and has a gorgeous family and I’m just lucky I get to call him my friend,” Underwood said. “ He’s just good people. And when you find good people that you get to work with and work around it just makes everything better.”

Singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow poses for a portrait in promotion of her upcoming album, "Feels Like Home," on Friday, Aug. 23, 2013 in New York. (Photo by Dan Hallman/Invision/AP)

Tuesday is a big day for country music’s two most prolific award-giving associations.

The Country Music Association has recruited Sheryl Crow and Florida Georgia Line to announce nominees for its 47th annual CMA Awards on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday morning. The announcement is time delayed and will air locally at 8:30 a.m., but The Tennessean will post nominees as they are announced on the East Coast, starting at 7:30 a.m., here at Tennessean.com/music.

The CMA Music Fest attracted more than 80,000 people to downtown, also a record, and its prime-time broadcast on ABC, which was filmed during the June event and then broadcast on Aug. 12, achieved its best ratings since 2005. The special had 8.3 million viewers, a 45 percent increase from the previous year.

It’s against that backdrop of growth and record-setting revenue that the Country Music Association launched a search for a new CEO. Though the association has had just five CEOs since its formation in 1958, it will soon be hiring its third chief in the past seven years.Continue reading →

Director Kyle Young shows the new top-floor event hall at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. The museum is on track to meet its $100 million fundraising goal, and renovations are expected to wrap up early next year. (photo: Sanford Myers / The Tennessean)

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has secured $78 million from private donations as part of its ongoing fundraising campaign to pay for a $100 million expansion, which is expected to be completed early next year.

Once completed, the new Country Music Hall of Fame will have grown from 140,000 square feet to 350,000 square feet and the building will literally sync up to the south with the new Omni Hotel, which is the headquarters hotel for the new convention center. For instance, the terrace outside the new top floor event hall connects to the Omni outdoor pool deck.

The museum’s expansion is expected to be completed in time for an anticipated celebration in March.

Touting record attendance and its secure financial situation, Hall of Fame Director Kyle Young appealed to the public to help close the $22 million gap. Young said the fundraising effort was about where he thought it would be at this point in the campaign.

“We feel like we’re in the home stretch, and given what we have in the works, other potential donors we’re working through, I’m fairly confident we’ll get it,” Young said. “We’ll hit goal.”

Lewis Lavine, president for Nashville’s Center for Nonprofit Management, said the public mood has improved for such massive fundraising efforts after falling off sharply during the recession.

“Following a decade-and-a-half of ‘rah-rah’ fundraising, everything changed in 2009 and capital campaigns, large endowment campaigns really came to a crashing halt,” Lavine said. “Since then, the economy has gotten better and the environment is better, but it’s still not what it was.”

Working to the Hall of Fame’s advantage, Lavine said, is its success over the past decade, stressing that potential donors want to know whether the Hall of Fame is financially secure.

Record attendance

The Hall of Fame opened at its current location along Demonbreun in 2001, survived a decline in visitors after the Sept. 11 attacks and proceeded to grow considerably of late.

Last year, the Hall of Fame set its attendance record with 564,777 visitors. Through Aug. 25, attendance is up 32.1 percent over last year, Young said.

In 2010, the city approved a $34 million financing deal for the Hall of Fame expansion and its connector to Omni. The project is funded through money set aside from property tax revenues from downtown’s redevelopment district.

“With the expansion of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and its integration into the Omni Hotel and Music City Center, I expect it to play an even more significant role as one of America’s most important cultural institutions and a key magnet for tourism in Nashville,” Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said.

The building’s operating budget, which is public record, shows that its 2012 revenue exceeded expenses by $2.2 million. Financial reports provided to The Tennessean for 2013 show the Hall of Fame bringing in $3 million more than its expenses so far.

“I think we have a real advantage to engage people and capture people’s imagination,” Young said. “We are in an unusual position in that we’ve got something that is really culturally important and central to the brand of this city — an accredited museum but also a measurable and sizable economic impact.”

The bulk of the capital raised during the silent phase of the Hall of Fame’s fundraising efforts — $48 million — came from donors who gave at least $1 million. Board Chairman Steve Turner and his wife, Judy, gave a $6.5 million gift. In addition to the Country Music Association’s $10 million donation for a new performance space, other large donors include Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Tennessee, BMI, City National Bank, the Dugas Family Foundation, the Gretsch Family, Carl and Connie Halley, HCA, the Memorial Foundation and Will, Jan and Gary Overton.

-Nate Rau
The Tennessean

Contact Nate Rau at 615-259-8094 or nrau@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter @tnnaterau.

Country Music Hall of Fame History

1967

Opened in Nashville at 16th Avenue and Division Street

2001

Moved to its new $37 million building south of Broadway on Demonbreun

2011

Launched fundraising campaign to pay for $100 million expansion as part of campus that includes Music City Center and Omni Hotel